Although he is best known for his work as Basil Fawlty, Mr Cleese also has a strong business pedigree and as the co-founder of Video Arts, a business training programme, has over the years provided talks on the subjects of business and psychology to students, using his technique of making people laugh.

In a video for The Big Think, he explained: “I’ve been warned recently not to go to university campuses because political correctness has been taken from being a good idea, from ‘let us not be mean particularly to people who are not able to look after themselves very well’, to the point where any kind of criticism of any kind of individual or group can be labelled cruel.